Today's Opinions

On his recent trip abroad, Sen. Barack Obama saw evidence of the fact that our European allies, like most Americans, want our next president to offer a change of direction.

After touring Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama spoke to a crowd of tens of thousands of people, many of them young, in Berlin, Germany. He reminded his audience of the long ties between the U.S. and Europe. He knew he was speaking before a crowd that has recently seen the U.S. as a swaggering, arrogant power that, under Bush and Cheney, thumbs its nose at the world.

Not a day goes by when I am not asked about rising energy prices. These increased costs affect everyone. A large number of factors have combined to put pressure on energy and gasoline prices, including diminishing U.S. oil production, increased world demand for crude oil, and U.S. refinery capacity that is inadequate to supply gasoline to a recovering national economy. These are serious problems that will not go away with time, and they require real solutions that will restore American energy independence and help ease the pain of record cost fill-up.

Josh Raines doesn’t strike me as a grinch.

Raines, race director of the YMCA Peaks of Otter Christmas Classic, was surprised that his race was being pointed to as the primary reason for the movement of Bedford’s annual Christmas parade into the evening.

The parade, which has been held on the first Saturday of December, has a start time of 11 a.m.